Under the Moon
by SharonToggle
Summary: One night, Gaara runs into an extremely unlikely person who turns his world upsidedown with a few words. Shounen ai, uncommon pairing. Short, sort of a challenge fic.


A/N:  Okay, my first Naruto fic, and a short one at that. ^^;;  I'm actually rather proud of it, though.  There's metaphor!  I'm a real author! *sob*

I feel like this fanfic needs some sort of explanation, so here goes ^^;;  It was pretty late at night at Katsucon, and I was fooling around with some of my friends and my good buddy Kiko Tomodachi's little Naruto figures.  We were talking about weird pairings, so Kiko closes her eyes and picks out two of her figures.  In about and hour and a half, I had this story in her hands.

Under the Moon

            Gaara let his baleful gaze sweep over the slumbering village.  Stupid fools.  He hated every man, woman, and child of them.  He'd kill them, eventually.  He'd kill everyone eventually.

            In the time he and Temari and Kankuro had spent in Leaf, Gaara had learned his way around the rooftops of the sleeping village quite well.  The boy liked the night.  It was cold and dark and quiet and deserted.  That was how the world would be, when Gaara killed everyone.  Everyone but himself, because he couldn't.

If he could, Gaara of the Desert would be the first to die.

The boy leapt to the next rooftop, silent as the light breeze that ruffled his short, blood-colored hair.  He straightened, and stared at the pale half-moon caught in the grasping branches of a reaching tree.  That was like himself, that moon.  Half a person, caught and dragged down by the black, spindly fingers of they who did not shine as brightly as he did.

Gaara felt the hate growing in him, then.  Those trees, they represented everything, everything he hated and despised, and they who hated and despised him in return.  He pulled his sand, his mother, out, and prepared to destroy them.

"Yo."

The sand that had been streaming from his gourd instinctively shot up in a shield around him as the red-haired boy twitched in surprise.  Gaara stared at the figure shifting in the lower branches of the tree.

It was a Leaf ninja, jounin or chuunin by his uniform, with a shock of moon-colored hair and skin almost as pale.  His face was hidden by a dark cloth, one eye covered by his Leaf headband.  He was staring lazily at Gaara with the other.

Gaara let the sand fall to the ground around him, and stared balefully back at the man, not speaking.  A few moments passed in silence as they eyed each other.

It was the other man who spoke first.  "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I don't sleep," Gaara answered curtly.  He didn't even know what he was talking to the ninja.  He should just leave.

"So you go out every night?"

"Yes."  When he was younger, Temari and Kankuro had taken turns staying up with him to keep him company.  But they had eventually stopped, realizing that Gaara preferred to spend his nights wandering the rooftops of Hidden Sand, in the quiet under the stars.  That hadn't changed when they'd come to Leaf.

"Eeeh?" the other drawled lazily.  "Doesn't that get boring?"

"What are you doing out, then?" Gaara snapped before he could stop himself.  The second the words were out of his mouth, Gaara tried to convince himself he didn't care.

"Mmm…" the man said softly, glancing up at the moon above him.  "I don't really know.  It's too stuffy indoors, though."  Gaara looked at the moon, too.  "And it's quiet out," the man continued.  "Nice and cool and peaceful."

"It's fake," Gaara muttered.  "The peacefulness.  Humans can't _be_ peaceful."  No, humans did terrible things to each other.  They made monsters so they could kill each other in wars.  That was why they should all die.  Another reason.

The other man looked unimpressed by this statement.  "True," he said evenly.  "That's why they need ninjas."

Gaara was getting that insane look in his eyes again.  Just thinking about it… The sand was thirsty.  It wanted more blood.  He was barely aware he was speaking out loud.  "They deserve to die, all of them.  I can do it.  I'll kill them all.  I'll kill everyone."

"No you won't."

These three words brought Gaara up short, cut through his crazed thoughts like a hot knife through butter.  "What?"

"You don't have it in you to kill everyone."

Gaara glared, and was tempted to kill the man on the spot with the sand at his feet.  "What do you mean?" he demanded.

"You said you go out every night?" Gaara nodded once, impatiently.  "So you've had lots of chances to murder everyone in the village in their sleep."

The green-eyed boy stared.

"I don't really think that you want to kill everyone.  Besides, wouldn't it be lonely if you did?"

"I—I don't care," Gaara said absently, still in shock.  "I won't be lonely."

The man fixed him with a stare that spoke of a wisdom attained only by experience.  "If everyone you knew died, you wouldn't be lonely?"

Gaara stared.  If Temari and Kankuro died….

Suddenly, Gaara wanted to be anywhere but where he was, speaking with this handsome man that could tip his black-and-white world out of balance with a few words.  He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he wanted to see his brother and sister.

Gaara cast a fleeting look at the half moon.  It had risen above the trees now.  "I'm leaving." He said shortly.

"Alright," the man replied, nodding slightly.

Gaara turned, the sand at his feet rising to pack itself back into the gourd on his back.  He hesitated a moment, before glancing over his shoulder.  "When—when will you—be out again?"

The man looked pensively up at the sky.  "Oh, I'd say at the full moon."

A/N:  Whoo, all done, what'd you think?  Did I get them in character?  Please leave a review if I haven't freaked you out too badly!


End file.
